Sanctions as a deterrent to nuclear testing

ABSTRACT

This article considers the role of economic sanctions in deterring nuclear testing. It argues that sanctions have been relatively effective in discouraging the pursuit and acquisition of nuclear weapons but have a more mixed track record when it comes to preventing nuclear tests. The article explains why preventing further nuclear testing furthers US nonproliferation interests and discusses three different avenues for strengthening sanctions against nuclear testing: through the United Nations Security Council, unilaterally, or through coordination with like-minded partners. It argues for the importance of sanctions even in complicated cases where US allies are considering conducting nuclear tests.

KEYWORDS:

• sanctions
• nuclear testing
• deterrence
• proliferation
• nuclear weapons
• Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)

Notes

1 John F. Kennedy, “Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, July 26, 1963,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, <https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/nuclear-test-ban-treaty-19630726>.

2 William J. Clinton, “Remarks on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and an Exchange With Reporters in Kansas City,” September 10, 1996, American Presidency Project, <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/223239>.

3 India, Pakistan, and North Korea have not signed the treaty. China, Egypt, Iran, and Israel have signed but not ratified the treaty.

4 Linton F. Brooks, “The End of Arms Control?,” Daedalus, Vol. 149, No. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 84–100, <https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01791>.

5 John Hudson and Paul Sonne, “Trump Administration Discussed Conducting First U.S. Nuclear Test in Decades,” Washington Post, May 22, 2020, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-administration-discussed-conducting-first-us-nuclear-test-in-decades/2020/05/22/a805c904-9c5b-11ea-b60c-3be060a4f8e1_story.html>.

6 See David W. Kearn Jr., “The Baruch Plan and the Quest for Atomic Disarmament,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2010), pp. 41–67, <https://doi.org/10.1080/09592290903577742>.

7 See Shane J. Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), pp. 63–64, <https://flexpub.com/preview/nuclear-apartheid>; and Michael Mastanduno, “Trade as a Strategic Weapon: American and Alliance Export Control Policy in the Early Postwar Period,” International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1988), pp. 129–138, <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300007153>.

8 Nicholas L. Miller, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), pp. 41–44, <https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501717802/stopping-the-bomb/>. US approval would be required for the use of the weapons, but the physical security surrounding the weapons was initially quite weak.

9 Jeff D. Colgan and Nicholas L. Miller, “Rival Hierarchies and the Origins of Nuclear Technology Sharing,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2 (2019), pp. 310–321, <https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqz002>.

10 The Arms Control Association claims that Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was the first to call for a global halt to nuclear weapons testing in 1954. Arms Control Association, “Nuclear Testing and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) Timeline,” last reviewed July 2020, <https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclear-Testing-and-Comprehensive-Test-Ban-Treaty-CTBT-Timeline>.

11 Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Castle Bravo,” March 1, 2017, <https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/castle-bravo>.

12 See Martha Smith-Norris, “The Eisenhower Administration and the Nuclear Test-Ban Talks, 1958–1960: Another Challenge to ‘Revisionism,’” Diplomatic History, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2003), pp. 503–541, <https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7709.00366>.

13 See Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark, “Nuclear Beliefs: A Leader-Focused Theory of Counter-Proliferation,” Security Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2017), pp. 560–563, <https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2017.1331628>.

14 See Andreas Wenger and Marcel Gerber, “John F. Kennedy and the Limited Test Ban Treaty: A Case Study of Presidential Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1999), pp. 460–487, <https://doi.org/10.1111/1741-5705.00044>.

15 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, pp. 50–64.

16 According to Article IX, “For the purposes of this Treaty, a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967.” Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, July 1, 1968, <https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/text>.

17 Thomas Graham Jr., Unending Crisis: National Security Policy After 9/11 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012), pp. 176–177.

18 See Or Rabinowitz, Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington and Its Cold War Deals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 88.

19 The latter agreement was not ratified until 1990 though it was observed in the interim. Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests (and Protocol Thereto), July 3, 1974, <https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/5204.htm>.

20 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, pp. 74–78.

21 Joseph O’Mahoney, “The Smiling Buddha effect: Canadian and US policy after India’s 1974 nuclear test,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 27, Nos. 1–3 (2020), pp. 161–179, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2020.1803561>.

22 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, pp. 82–86.

23 See US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “Nuclear Regulatory Legislation, 112th Congress; 2nd Session,” NUREG-0980, Vol. 3, No. 10 (September 2013), pp. 1073–1106, <https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1327/ML13274A492.pdf>.

24 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, ch. 5.

25 Anna-Mart van Wyk, “South African Nuclear Development in the 1970s: A Non-Proliferation Conundrum?” International History Review, Vol. 40, No. 5 (2018), pp. 1163–1166, <https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2018.1428212>. See also UN Security Council, Resolution 418, November 4, 1977, <https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/66633?ln=en>.

26 See Judith Miller, “Advise Yields to Consent in Nuclear Fuel Vote,” New York Times, September 28, 1980, p. E5.

27 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, pp. 136–141.

28 See Mark Fitzpatrick, Asia’s Latent Nuclear Powers: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (London: Routledge, 2016), chs. 1 and 3, <https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351223744>.

29 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, ch. 8.

30 Or Rabinowitz and Nicholas L. Miller, “Keeping the Bombs in the Basement: U.S. Nonproliferation Policy toward Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan,” International Security, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Summer 2015), p. 68, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/24480595>.

31 See Peter Liberman, “The Rise and Fall of South Africa’s Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 71–72, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/3092122>.

32 Robin Möser, “‘The major prize’: apartheid South Africa’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 1988–1991,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 26, No. 5­–6 (2020), pp. 559–573, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2019.1696543>.

33 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, p. 211.

34 See Jonathan D. Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and International Security (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 113–123 and Van Jackson, Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 145–169.

35 See Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995, Public Law No. 103-126, 108 Stat. 382 (1994), Title VIII, <https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/2333/text>. For the history of the legislation, see Randy J. Rydell, “Giving nonproliferation norms teeth: Sanctions and the NNPA,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1999), pp. 1–19.

36 Rabinowitz, Bargaining on Nuclear Tests, pp. 182–184.

37 Thomas Graham Jr., Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), p. 246.

38 Arms Control Association, “Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at a Glance.”

39 Rabinowitz, Bargaining on Nuclear Tests, pp. 186–188.

40 Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 259–280.

41 Thomas W. Lippmann, “US Lifts Sanctions on India, Pakistan,” Washington Post, November 7, 1998, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/11/07/us-lifts-sanctions-on-india-pakistan/3771637b-b980-40b2-b5eb-7fb8a053870d/>.

42 UN Security Council, Resolution 1172, S/Res/1172, June 6, 1998, <https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/255150?ln=en>.

43 CNN, “Bush Lifts India, Pakistan Sanctions,” September 22, 2001, <http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/09/22/ret.sanctions.pakistan/>.

44 Arms Control Association, “The US-North Korean Agreed Framework at a Glance,” last reviewed July 2018, <https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/agreedframework>.

45 David Ensor, “US has photos of secret Iran nuclear sites,” CNN, December 13, 2002, <https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/12/iran.nuclear/>.

46 Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), p. 214.

47 Miller, Stopping the Bomb, 231–233; and Nicholas L. Miller and Vipin Narang, “North Korea Defied the Theoretical Odds: What Can We Learn from its Successful Nuclearization?” Texas National Security Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2018), pp. 58–75, <https://tnsr.org/2018/02/north-korea-defied-theoretical-odds-can-learn-successful-nuclearization/>.

48 Bruce W. Jentleson and Christopher Whytock, “Who ‘Won’ Libya? The Force-Diplomacy Debate and Its Implications for Theory and Policy,” International Security, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2005–2006), pp. 47–86, <https://scholarship.law.uci.edu/faculty_scholarship/718/>.

49 White House, “Executive Order 13382 of June 28, 2005: Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and their Supporters,” Federal Register, Vol. 70, No. 126, July 1, 2005, p. 38567, <https://www.

50 Arms Control Association, “UN Security Council Resolution 1540 At a Glance,” last reviewed February 2021, <https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/1540>.

51 UN Security Council, “Security Council Imposes Sanctions on Iran for Failure to Halt Uranium Enrichment, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 1737,” SC/8928, December 23, 2006, <https://press.un.org/en/2006/sc8928.doc.htm>.

52 CNN, “North Korea pledges to test nuclear bomb,” October 4, 2006, <https://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/03/nkorea.nuclear/index.html>.

53 Arms Control Association, “UN Security Council Resolutions on North Korea,” last reviewed January 2022, <https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/UN-Security-Council-Resolutions-on-North-Korea>.

54 Secondary sanctions impose penalties on those who do business with US-sanctioned entities. They generally involve the curtailment of correspondent banking-account relationships (for financial institutions) and a raft of other penalties for nonfinancial entities.

55 See Richard Nephew, The Art of Sanctions: A View from the Field (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), ch. 7; and Miller, Stopping the Bomb, ch. 9.

56 Nicholas L. Miller, “The Secret Success of Nonproliferation Sanctions,” International Organization, Vol. 68, No. 4 (2014), pp. 913–944. The United States also used positive inducements to dissuade countries from seeking nuclear weapons. See John Krige and Jayita Sarkar, “US technological collaboration for nonproliferation: key evidence from the Cold War,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 25, Nos. 3–4 (2018), pp. 249–262, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2018.1510465>.

57 See Matthew Kroenig, “Exporting the Bomb: Why States Provide Sensitive Nuclear Assistance,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 103, No. 1 (2009), pp. 128–129, <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055409090017>.

58 See Miller, “The Secret Success of Nonproliferation Sanctions”; Fitzpatrick, Asia’s Latent Nuclear Powers; and O’Mahoney, “The Smiling Buddha effect.”

59 Braut-Hegghammer, Unclear Physics, p. 212.

60 See Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, “Cheater’s Dilemma: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Path to War,” International Security, Vol. 45, No. 1 (2020), pp. 51–89, <https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00382>.

61 Liberman, “The Rise and Fall of the South African Bomb,” pp. 83–84.

62 Ariane Tabatabai, “Negotiating the ‘Iran Talks’ in Tehran: the Iranian Drivers that shaped the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 24, Nos. 3–4 (2017), pp. 225–242, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2018.1426180>.

63 See Avner Cohen and Benjamin Frankel, “Opaque Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1990), pp. 14–44, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402399008437417>; and Mitsuru Kitano, “Opaque nuclear proliferation revisited: determinants, dynamism, and policy implications,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23, Nos. 3–4 (2016), pp. 459–479, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2017.1279792>.

64 Rabinowitz, Bargaining on Nuclear Tests, p. 118.

65 Rabinowitz, pp. 188–189.

66 Khan, Eating Grass, pp. 276–277.

67 See Rabia Akhtar, The Blind Eye: U.S. Non-Proliferation Policy Towards Pakistan from Ford to Clinton (Lahore: University of Lahore Press, 2018), pp. 304–313.

68 See Nicholas L. Miller, “Nuclear Dominoes: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?,” Security Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2014), pp. 33–73, <https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2014.874189>.

69 Graham, Unending Crisis, p. 186.

70 On the importance of verifiability for effective nonproliferation red lines, see Dan Altman and Nicholas L. Miller, “Red lines in nuclear nonproliferation,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 24, Nos. 3–4 (2017), pp. 315–342, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2018.1433575>.

71 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, <https://www.ctbto.org/>.

72 US Air Force, “Air Force Technical Applications Center,” last updated June 2022, <https://www.16af.af.mil/About-Us/Unit-Fact-Sheets/Article/1963049/air-force-technical-applications-center/>.

73 US Air Force, “Air Force Technical Applications Center.”

74 National Academy of Sciences, Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002), p. 9, <https://doi.org/10.17226/10471>.

75 Stephen Herzog, Benoît Pelopidas, and Fabrício Fialho, “Donald Trump Could Lose the Election by Authorizing a New Nuclear Weapons Test,” National Interest, June 23, 2020, <https://nationalinterest.org/feature/donald-trump-could-lose-election-authorizing-new-nuclear-weapons-test-163328>.

76 UN Security Council, Resolution 1540, S/Res/1540, April 28, 2004, <https://undocs.org/S/RES/1540(2004)>.

77 UN Security Council, Resolution 1540.

78 UN Security Council, Resolution 1887, S/Res/1887, September 24, 2009, <http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/1887>.

79 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995, Title VIII.

80 BBC, “UK Imposes Sanctions Against Human Rights Abusers,” July 6, 2020, <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-53303100>.

81 See Leonard Weiss, “The 1979 South Atlantic Nuclear Flash: The Case for an Israeli Nuclear Test,” in Henry Sokolski, ed., Moving Beyond Pretense: Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2014), pp. 345–371, <https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/Moving%20Beyond%20Pretense%20Nuclear%20Power%20and%20Nonproliferation.pdf>.

82 See Or Rabinowitz, “The dilemma of a ‘trigger-happy protégé’—Israel, France, and President Carter’s Iraq policy,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2019), <https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2019.1615461>.

83 Nicholas L. Miller and Vipin Narang, “Is a New Nuclear Age Upon Us? Why We May Look Back on 2019 as the Point of No Return,” Foreign Affairs, December 30, 2019, <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-12-30/new-nuclear-age-upon-us>.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matt Bowen

Matt Bowen is a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, focusing on nuclear energy, waste, and nonproliferation. He was formerly a nuclear policy fellow at Clean Air Task Force and a senior policy fellow at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. During the Obama administration, he was an associate deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Nuclear Energy and a senior adviser in the Office of Nonproliferation and Arms Control at the Department of Energy (DOE). Before working at DOE, he was an American Association for the Advancement of Science/American Physical Society Science Fellow for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Dr. Bowen received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Brown University and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Washington, Seattle. He has held positions with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Physics and Astronomy, Board on Energy and Environmental Studies, and Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences.

Nicholas L. Miller

Nicholas L. Miller is an associate professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. His research focuses primarily on the causes and consequences of nuclear-weapons proliferation. His book, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy, was published by Cornell University Press in 2018. His work has also been published in a wide variety of scholarly journals, including the American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Security, Security Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly. He is currently working on a book project that analyzes how the United States responds to emerging nuclear powers. He earned his PhD in political science in 2014 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Richard Nephew

Richard Nephew is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, currently on public-service leave as the coordinator on global anti-corruption at the US Department of State. He is the author of The Art of Sanctions and an expert on the use of sanctions for deterrence and impact. He previously served in the Biden administration as the deputy special envoy for Iran. During the Obama administration, he was principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the Department of State and the lead sanctions expert for the US team negotiating with Iran. In that administration, he also served as the director for Iran on the National Security Council staff, where he was responsible for managing a period of intense expansion of US sanctions on Iran. Earlier in his career, he served in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the State Department and in the Office of Nonproliferation and International Security at the Department of Energy. He holds a master’s degree in security policy studies and a bachelor’s degree in international affairs, both from George Washington University.